The social media network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
